Contributor
TheCuttlefish
Cares about the box, the insert and the rulebook as much as the game. Has a particular weakness for tidy rules and gleeful take-that.
🎁 2 kudos from readers
238 reviews
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Review Whistle Stop
Whistle Stop is a tight pick-up-and-deliver game with more going on beneath the surface than its pace suggests. It moves briskly, but an unclear rules presentation can derail an early play.
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Review The Great Zimbabwe
The Great Zimbabwe is not the heavy beast it first appears to be. It is a deep economic game that needs a more readable rulebook and opponents willing to be rather less polite.
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Review 1870: Railroading Across the Trans Mississippi from 1870
1870: Railroading Across the Trans Mississippi delivered the particular kind of railway game in which the stock market is hostile, the map is hostile, and your friends are doing their best to improve matters.
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Review M.U.L.E. The Board Game
M.U.L.E. The Board Game is a solid light economic game that keeps luck in its place and gives players room to make proper decisions. Then the pirates arrive and make it personal.
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Review Urban Sprawl
Urban Sprawl has an AP reputation for a reason, but a table willing to live with its pace can get a satisfyingly full game out of it.
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Review Among Nobles
Among Nobles is not reinventing anything, but at three players it delivers a tight, pleasing hour that can come down to the final marriage.
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Review Hegemonic
Hegemonic is a heavy, combative game for six that rewards long-term planning while happily exhausting a table with analysis and retaliation. Give it time and clear heads, and its pressure can be thoroughly worthwhile.
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Review Indonesia
Indonesia is a merciless, almost perfectly clean economic mind game: luck stays out of the way, while the players cheerfully ruin one another's plans. At five it is still excellent, though the seasons move quickly enough that the meal feels a little less substantial.
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Review Saloon Tycoon
Saloon Tycoon is a brisk, light saloon-building game with more beneath the hat brim than it first lets on. It makes an excellent appetiser, then quietly asks for another play.
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Review Ponzi Scheme
Ponzi Scheme is a handsome, deceptively simple investment game with enough venom to make success feel personal. Later plays temper the first rush of hostility, without making it any less worth owning.
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Review Cavern Tavern
Cavern Tavern borrows from Kingsburg and Lords of Waterdeep without surpassing either, but it has enough bite to justify its own place at the table. Its rules are needlessly hard work; the player interaction is not.
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Review New Angeles
New Angeles makes a rough first impression, and its rulebooks do not make that first contact any smoother. Our opening game collapsed early, but it left me wanting another go rather than an excuse to pack it away.
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Review Carson City: Big Box
Carson City: Big Box came back to the table with horses and an aggressively combative character mix, and promptly reminded us why it made such a strong first impression. Nobody was allowed a quiet little corner of the West.
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Review A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King
An honest retheme of That's My Fish!, with Varys clearing Westeros of people while players close routes in each other’s faces. At three it has room to bite; at four it is over before anyone can hold a grudge.
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Review The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire
The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire does not pretend to be a heavy game, but it keeps the table involved and the session moving. At around 70 minutes, it felt like money well spent.
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Review Wealth of Nations: War Clouds
Wealth of Nations: War Clouds remains a merciless economic game, where no gain is private and every advantage gives somebody else a reason to come for you. With an experienced group, it gets harsher — and, in spite of the complaints, better.
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Review Great Western Trail
Great Western Trail turns point salad into a smooth, well-paced race for the things everyone suddenly needs. It is not an area-control brawl; it is a brisk game of getting there first.
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Review Tesla vs. Edison: Powering Up!
Tesla vs. Edison: Powering Up! is an honest expansion for an economic euro that deserves far more table time. Its handsome production still matters, but the real achievement is a sharper, nastier competitive edge.
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Review Scoville
In Scoville, my wife flattened the rest of us. My clearest review is that I was looking at lottery tickets afterwards.
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Review Kohle & Kolonie
Kohle & Kolonie is a tight, heavy euro that won us over even while its rulebook, errata and FAQs pushed us into playing something that was probably not quite the intended game. There is a very good design in there; the rules are simply determined to make you excavate it.
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Review Tin Goose
Tin Goose is a light economic game that gives nobody a free ride. It teaches quickly, plays tightly, and makes every rival’s success look like a personal inconvenience.
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Review Nations
With every extra rule and expansion in play, Nations became a brisk, unforgiving civilisation race. Viking raids set the table scrambling from round one, and the game still came down to a single point with no dead air.
